Coupons.com Among This Week’s New Stocks to Watch

Two biotech stocks fill out this week's slate

This week, we’ll see three IPOs hit the market, but among these three new stocks, there’s only one — Coupons.com — that I’d put on my own personal list of stocks to watch closely.

There’s currently lots of pent-up demand for new stocks in the tech space. The latest example of investors’ hunger came in the form of Varonis Systems (VRNS), which went public last week and roughly doubled in its first day of trading. Varonis is a top player in the fast-growing Big Data industry, helping companies manage and analyze unstructured data like spreadsheets, presentations, email and so on.

Coupons.com will be the next IPO swing in the booming tech space, so let’s take a look at its offering, as well as the other couple deals on deck for this week:

New Stocks to Watch: Coupons.com (COUP)

Coupons.com (COUP), which was founded in 1998, operates a digital promotion platform that connects more than 2,000 brands and more than 700 retailers with consumers. The virtual coupons are available via the Internet, mobile and social networks such as Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (FB).

Coupons.com makes its money by charging fees whenever someone redeems a digital coupon, though it also generates advertising revenues. COUP has massive scale, boasting 17 million monthly unique visits. Transactions totaled 1.3 billion in 2013, which was up 43% on a year-over-year basis. Revenues have been growing nicely, too, with 2013′s numbers coming in at $167.9 million, or nearly 50% higher YOY.

However, Coupons.com has consistently been a money loser. During 2013, COUP suffered a net loss was $11.2 million, though the company has been making strides in reducing its shortfalls.

Boding well for Coupons.com is the success of another digital coupon operator, RetailMeNot (SALE), which has doubled since its July IPO.

Coupons.com plans to offer 10 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “COUP” at a range of $12 to $14. Lead underwriters include Goldman Sachs (GS), Allen & Company, BofA Merrill Lynch (BAC) and RBC Capital Markets (RY).

New Stocks to Watch: Aquinox Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:AQXP)

Biotech stocks also have taken off in 2014, which has given way to a host of new stocks in the space. For instance, coming up this week is Aquinox Pharmaceuticals (AQXP), a clinical-stage biotech company that targets the treatment of inflammation and cancer. The company’s key focus is on SHIP1, a critical regulator of an important cellular signaling pathway in immune cells.

The lead candidate is AQX-1125, which has so far provided broad anti-inflammatory activity such as for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bladder pain syndrome. It is currently in Phase 2 clinical trials.

As for its IPO, Aquinox plans to issue 3.7 million shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker “AQXP” at a range of $10 to $12. Lead underwriters include Jefferies & Co. and Cowen & Company.

Recro’s lead candidate is Dexmedetomidine, which is ready for Phase IIb trials. The company believes the drug could be an alternative for more than 50 million surgical procedures that need post-operative pain relief.

Recro plans to issue 2.5 million shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker “REPH” at a range of $10 to $12. Aegis Capital is the lead underwriter.

Based in Silicon Valley, Tom Taulli is in the heart of IPO land. On a regular basis, he talks with many of the top tech CEOs and founders trying to find the next hot deals and finding out which start-ups are stinkers.

A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.

Tom is routinely quoted in the media about upcoming deals with his interviews on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, but he is eager to take your questions too. You can message him on Twitter at @ttaulli. And feel free to weigh in via the comments section on any of his IPO Playbook posts.